A kinder, gentler war on drugs.

Good for President Obama to declare war on drug addiction. It's a war that we must fight, and one that we cannot afford to lose.

America is in the middle of a serious drug epidemic, and it is taking the lives of countless American children in places that we never expected to see drug addiction and dependency becoming a problem.

The sate of Vermont, for instance, has a serious heroin epidemic on its hands, and not even Bernie can stop it. It has gotten so bad in that state that the poor governor dedicated his entire State of the State address to the problem. And of course we all know that Vermont is not alone.

Contrast how president Obama is dealing with America's latest drug problem to how our government dealt with a similar problem having to do with drugs over 25 years ago. In fact, some would argue, the government actually created the problem for certain communities.

Back then it was incarceration and punishment. Now it's treatment and counseling. President Obama's war on drugs is gentler than previous ones, and I suspect that I know why.

Today's drug crises is being driven by heroin, and guess which demographic uses more heroin than everyone else? If you said young white kids, move to the head of the class. 

The following is from the New York Times:

"When the nation’s long-running war against drugs was defined by the crack epidemic and based in poor, predominantly black urban areas, the public response was defined by zero tolerance and stiff prison sentences. But today’s heroin crisis is different. While heroin use has climbed among all demographic groups, it has skyrocketed among whites; nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.

And the growing army of families of those lost to heroin — many of them in the suburbs and small towns — are now using their influence, anger and grief to cushion the country’s approach to drugs, from altering the language around addiction to prodding government to treat it not as a crime, but as a disease." [Source] 

Of course it's not a "crime". Crime would mean that something wrong is being done. Remember, as is damn near everything else in America, not all drug addictions are created equal.  

So now we are collectively shocked that we have such a problem with drugs in our country. Now that drugs are in our children's bedrooms, and hidden in the back of the family mini vans, we are finally realizing that we have a problem. And we realize that it is a problem that can have a negative long lasting effect on society. You know, kind of like crack cocaine did with certain segments of the black population back in the day. 

Of course their families will never recover, because their family members are serving long jail times for possessing small amounts of drugs, and there was no treatment offered to those who got hooked and couldn't get off until they were dead. The remedy for the drug epidemic facing black America  then , was draconian punishment brought on by strict sentencing guidelines, and "tougher" law enforcement. 

Quite a few politicians bolstered their careers by telling white America that they would keep them safe from the drugs those blacks were using and the type of people peddling them. (I see you Bill and Hillary) Now, I suspect. politicians will use the opposite tact to gain brownie points with voters as well. (I see you President Obama)

"At Courtney’s funeral, they decided to acknowledge the reality that redefined their lives: Their bright, beautiful daughter, just 20, who played the French horn in high school and dreamed of living in Hawaii, had been kicked out of the Marines for drugs. Eventually, she overdosed at her boyfriend’s grandmother’s house, where she died alone."

There are a lot of sad and tragic stories like Courtney's out there. Hopefully we will be smarter with the new war on drugs than we were the old one.

*Pic from youtube.com

    

Legalize It!

I remember back in the early eighties while I in college I would go home to Jamaica every chance I got. Seems I was always home sick back then. What was amazing to me was to see how some of the kids who I grew up with were living in freshly built mansions, complete with tennis courts and three car garages. These kids didn't have a pot to piss in when I left, but now they were blowing up. Of course I knew how they made their money. They made it the old fashion way, selling drugs. Ganga was our biggest export from Jamaica in the seventies and eighties, and there are many Jamaicans who will tell you that it kept our economy afloat. I will never forget the stories of planes taking off and landing all through the night on rural country roads after people would dash out of the hills to construct makeshift runways with home made lanterns. They would load those marijuana planes quicker than a NASCAR pit crew and off they would go.

Of course all that marijuana and all those drugs were coming to A-merry-ca. This country had a huge so called drug problem then, and nothing has changed since. Reagan and Bush (41) were in power during those years, and in spite of their so called "war on drugs ", and Nancy Reagan's anorexic ass crying "just say no", their war was doomed to failure. "Oh field you just want them to legalize marijuana so that your Jamaican ass can smoke it." Well that's half right. I do want it to be legalized, but I don't smoke it......well I did once but I didn't inhale......well maybe I did inhale, but that was a long time ago......and I did have some ganga soup once...enough of my personal life. This post isn't about the field's past indiscretions.

A drug dealer once asked me if I ever saw drugs offered at a discount or if I ever saw drugs being advertised? Of course not, because drug dealers don't have to offer discounts and they don't have to advertise; it's called supply and demand. That is what drives drug sales, and that is why some young knuckle head on a corner will risk serious jail time or death to sell rock cocaine to suburban kids for long dollars.

When the DEA working with Colombian police killed Pablo Escobar in 1993 on a Medellin roof top, they thought they had reached the tipping point of the war on drugs. But boy were they wrong. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the drug policy under Reagan and Bush was largely conducted in a "fog of ignorance". Bill Bennett's dumb ass spent 12 billion on the drug war and used Naval submarines, torpedoes, and F16's all for nothing. Congress panicked and passed tough laws to give poor crack cocaine users longer prison sentences than the wealthy powder snorting Wall Street users. As a result, an entire generation of poor black people have spent their lives behind bars, and have returned to society with no skills, no jobs, and no hope for a productive existence.

Again, according to Rolling Stone Magazine, If Richard Nixon had just listened back then to all those reports of a generation of soldiers coming home from Vietnam stoned with drug habits, things might have turned out differently. Nixon actually appointed a panel who considered decriminalizing marijuana and buying up the worlds opium supply to prevent it from being converted to heroin. But no, in typical rethuglican fashion, Nixon caved to the law and order crowd and A-merry-ca's fear of the hippies and those Negroes in the urban areas. What we have as a result is an out of touch and and fool hardy drug policy in this country which is getting worse every day.

I am not surprised to hear of the RAND Study that says that military efforts and imprisoning addicts is the least effective way to fight the scourge of drugs. They said that top decrease drug use the only thing that works is treatment. How about that? Good old fashioned treatment.

I bet treatment would curb A-merry-can's appetite and thus their demand for drugs. And then my friends down in Jamaica would have to cut back on their lavish spending habits. But unfortunately for the folks at the DEA, my friends are still laughing all the way to the bank. Or should I say the money launderers.